What is social media marketing? A guide for brands.

For a lot of brands, social media is where people first hear of them, where they go to check them out before buying, and where they go to complain afterwards. That makes it one of the most important things a brand does, and one of the easiest to do badly.

Here’s what social media marketing actually includes, how it differs from influencer marketing, how to plan it on one page, and how to tell whether it’s working.

What is social media marketing?

Social media marketing is how a brand uses social platforms to reach people, build a relationship with them and turn some of them into customers. It includes what you post on your own accounts, how you talk to people there, the ads you run, and the creators you work with.

What does social media marketing include?

• Strategy. Who you’re for, what you want them to do, and where.
• Content. Reels, Shorts, Stories, carousels, long-form video, LinkedIn posts.
• Community management. Replies, comments, messages and moderation. For many customers, this is your customer service.
• Paid social. Ads on Meta, YouTube and LinkedIn, including partnership ads that run from a creator’s account.
• Influencer and creator partnerships. Borrowing the trust of people your audience already follows.
• Social listening. What people say about you, your competitors and your category when you’re not in the room.
• Measurement. Reporting against goals, and changing course when something isn’t working.

How is it different from influencer marketing and content marketing?

• Social media marketing is the umbrella: everything a brand does on social platforms.
• Influencer marketing is one part of it: working with creators so your message reaches their audiences. More in what is influencer marketing.
• Content marketing is making genuinely useful content (articles, videos, guides) across every channel, social included. You’re reading some.

How do you build a social media strategy?

A strategy you’ll actually use fits on one page:

1. Who you’re for. One sentence about a person, not a list of demographics.
2. What you want them to do. Discover you, consider you, buy, come back, recommend you. Give each channel one main job.
3. Where they are. Two platforms done well beat five done badly. Instagram for most consumer brands, YouTube for considered purchases and how-tos, LinkedIn for selling to businesses.
4. What you’ll say. Three or four recurring themes your brand can own.
5. How often. A rhythm you can keep for a year, not a burst you’ll abandon in a month.
6. Who does what. Making, approving and replying, with names against each.
7. How you’ll measure it. One or two numbers per goal, agreed before you start.

What should a brand post on social media?

Things your audience would save, or send to a friend:

• Useful things. How-tos, honest comparisons, answers to the questions customers actually ask.
• People. The team, the makers, customers (with permission) and creators. Faces usually do better than logos.
• The making of things. Process, behind the scenes, the decisions behind the product.
• Series. Recognisable formats people come back for, which are also easier to make.

And what to stop posting: festival greetings with no idea behind them, stock photos, reposted memes, and anything made only to fill a slot in the calendar. Reposting is getting riskier too. In October 2026, YouTube said it would favour original Shorts and reduce reach for channels that mostly repost other people’s videos.

How do you measure social media marketing?

• Awareness: reach among the right people, profile visits, and new followers from the places you care about.
• Engagement that means something: saves, shares, thoughtful comments and messages. Likes are the weakest signal there is.
• Action: website visits, enquiries, sign-ups and sales, tracked with tagged links and the platforms’ own conversion tools.
• Care: how fast you reply, and how people feel about you.

Report monthly against the goal you set, not whichever number happened to go up.

Should you do social media in-house or hire an agency?

In-house keeps you closest to the brand and fastest to reply, but it needs people with time and range: strategy, shooting, editing, writing, community and ads are different skills. An agency brings that range and an outside eye, but needs a good brief and real access to the people who know the product. A hybrid is common and sensible: the agency leads strategy, production and ads, and your team handles day-to-day replies.

If you’re hiring, here are ten questions to ask a social media agency. And here’s how we manage social media for brands.